Cheating Video Arcades

I was becoming lucid in a dream, and thought I'd go outside of the room I was in to explore and ask questions. A girl was in the room with me and told me I couldn't go out, because I was naked.

me: "How's is it relevant if I'm naked? Who cares?"

girl: "You'll be arrested."

She handed me a towel. It wasn't quite long enough to go all the way around my body. I tangled with the dream-towel for a while, until I got frustrated with the very concept of having to deal with it.

me: "This is stupid. With everything I go through, to even worry about this... gah! Well, will I get arrested with this towel?"

girl: "Not if you keep it in front of your crotch. We can get you some clothes."

We arrived at a mall somehow. There was a Baskin-Robbins right by the entrance, and it had this modern version of their logo:

girl: "Don't think it's a bad mall just because they have that store. Usually it means it's a bad mall, but this one is good."

We went straight to an H&M store, which had only black and white clothes. It looked like all women's clothing. Seemingly there was a loss of interest in getting me anything to wear, and my companion had to run away to give someone a ride to "Madagascar at 9:00".

Note
I interpreted that they were talking about a showing of a movie titled Madagascar, not a trip to the actual island.

After a detour that involved getting stuck outside of the mall, I managed to find another entrance. This led into a store that sold DVDs, and I was looking around at the titles when several police ran in to confront me.

policeman: "You're under arrest!"

I backed away.

me: "Hold up! Hold up! What are the charges!"

policeman: "You've been cheating video arcades."

me: "Cheating video arcades? Okay, first of all I don't know what you're talking about. Secondly, why would someone get arrested for cheating at a video game anyway!"

policeman: "Because video games are important."

me: "What is a video game? How would you define it?"

This question seemed to puzzle the police.

me: "I don't know if I'm in a video game right now from your perspective or not. I mean, it's a very transitional enviornment... I live my whole life somewhere else and then just show up in a haze. I'm not saying there isn't SOMEONE out there committing crimes, but for any practical purposes that person is not me."

There was a bit of a buzz as the police started talking to each other, and we asked questions, and it got a little hazy. But they put forth a kind of theory. The theory was that if someone managed to have an unconscious link form with machines, the resulting manipulations could look on their radar like what they always associate with "cheating".

After making this realization, most of the police decided they needed to run off. One man--who may or may not have been with the police--said he should stay and take care of me. We went back out in the mall and I had trouble following him up an inclined ramp.

man: "Do you need some stairs?"

The ramp began to twist and deform until it had vine-like roots crossing it that allowed me to grip and go up to the next level.

me: "How did you get the ramp to morph like that?"

man: "There are buttons."

He pointed to the end of the ramp and I could see there was a control panel embedded into the floor. The man picked up some kind of microphone and began making an announcement to the mall. I hovered in the air as he spoke and did some test flying manuevers.

man: "I want to make an announcement to anyone who runs across this guy, to help him out if you can. He needs some way to validate his existence here. He's about 60 years old..."

The information he seemed to be giving out seemed mostly incorrect, except for my name. I flew back to him and the microphone.

me: "Thanks for the announcement. But actually... uh, from my perspective I've never been here, and odds are I won't again. So if you can help fix that, that would help the most. Secondly if you had something I could take back, maybe? An invention or breakthrough?"

man: (smiling) "Really all you need is potato crust."

me: "Er... we have potato bread. But I don't think that would impress anyone, so I'll assume you're joking."

He pulled out what looked like an atomic table. I looked it over.

me: "Okay, these don't match up. I see Helium but no Carbon or Hydrogen. I guess the names could be different but...if your atoms are different, we can't exchange objects."

I was finding it pretty easy to stay clear, and felt pretty ambitious.

me: "How about math? That's the universal language. We're working on the Riemann hypothesis but I don't know enough to take back a proof even if you had it, probably. Also that's just someone's name. Can you show me some of what you've got?"

He showed me a piece of paper, I saw square root signs on it.

me: "You have square roots. Do you have the square root of -1? It's a weird concept, we call it 'i'... so if you multiply it by itself you have i, -1, -i, 1, then back to i. It's really useful for describing things in circular patterns."

I drew circles and the man seemed to get the usefulness of imaginary numbers. We kept talking and walked into a man's office.

me: "What year do you think it is?"

man: "It's the year 1000."

me: "Hmmm... you mentioned the Iraq war earlier. We have a war participating in Iraq. It's... 2009, and uh... China hosted the Beijing Olympics... and we have a new president, Barack Obama, who's doing a great job so far after some bad presidents. He's all about transparency and accountability. Those are two big things with me."

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The accounts written here are as true as I can manage. While the
words are my own, they are not independent creative works of fiction
—in any intentional way. Thus I do not consider the material to
be protected by anything, other than that you'd have to be
crazy to want to try and use it for genuine purposes (much less
disingenuous ones!) But who's to say?